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Melville, Herman

(Encyclopedia) Melville, Herman, 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature. Like Moby-Dick, Pierre; or, The…

Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick is the enormous white whale who torments Captain Ahab in the Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick (1851). Ahab is obsessed with finding and killing Moby-Dick, having lost a leg in a previous…

whale

(Encyclopedia) whale, aquatic mammal of the order Cetacea, found in all oceans of the world. Members of this order vary greatly in size and include the largest animals that have ever lived. Cetaceans…

Olson, Charles

(Encyclopedia) Olson, Charles, 1910–70, American critic and poet, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1932; M.A., 1933). His literary reputation was established with Call Me Ishmael (1947), a…

Taylor, Edward Thompson

(Encyclopedia) Taylor, Edward Thompson, 1793–1871, American Methodist missionary preacher among seamen, known as Father Taylor, b. Richmond, Va. He was licensed in 1814 to preach and ordained in 1819…

Robinson, Boardman

(Encyclopedia) Robinson, Boardman, 1876–1952, American painter, illustrator, and cartoonist, b. Somerset, N.S., studied at the Massachusetts School of Art, Boston, and in Paris. After four years of…

whaling

(Encyclopedia) whaling, the hunting of whales for the oil that can be rendered from their flesh, for meat, and for baleen (whalebone). Historically, whale oil was economically the most important.…

Starbuck

Starbuck is a character in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by author Herman Melville. Strong and steady, Starbuck serves as first mate on the whaling ship Pequod under the command of the mad Captain Ahab…

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was the celebrated author of several big 19th-century novels about the sea, most importantly the novel Moby Dick. His first novel was Typee. Published in 1846, it recounted his…

New Bedford

(Encyclopedia) New Bedford, city (1990 pop. 99,922), seat of Bristol co., SE Mass., at the mouth of the Acushnet River on Buzzard's Bay; settled 1640, set off from Dartmouth 1787, inc. as a city 1847…